Midnight Bus to Agra

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3:30AM and I'm crammed into the second to last seat on a public overnight bus to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Its dark and the bus is over flowing with the type of uncertain silence that comes from 50 half alseep strangers...all secretly wanting to scream in frustration but not wanting to wake the person "sleeping" in the next seat.

The dark bus and sleep deprivation makes it easier to slip back in time and I'm not on a midnight bus to agra anymore, I'm on a school bus...its still dark and I'm laying on a big duffel bag and it msells like a locker room and this hulking form makes its way down the aisle past me...

"Jiiimmmmmyyy" all drawn out and gutteral in a "Big friendly Giant" sort of growl.

"Russelllll"

I'd try to relpy the same way but it never sounded right...

He plops down in the seat across from me and I look around and instead of 50 strangers from Dehradun I see my old team and some faces...Pat and Jason and Sean and Kyle and Adam and Benny and they're all talking and finishing off McDonalds...and I can't hear any of what they're saying but I know it must be funny beacuse Pat is turning blue and crying from laughter and kyle has his head back in a cackle and jason is bent over and at the center of it all is this big hairy man-child. He's sitting like the rest of us...back to the window...crammed into the seat with his bag and his stick and his cheeks are smeared like the rest of ours in eye black thats long lost its usefullness but no one wipes it off because it looks cool. Chances are we lost the game...and even though there would be some silent tension for the first part of the ride home you cold always count on Russ to break though with some comment like...."Look that dog's taking a shit....man nothing can make a dog move when its taking a shit....you could land a PLANE on a dog and it would just sit there like this..." and he'd sit on his haunches on his seat with his feet inside his hands and stretch his neck out real straight and far with this confiused look on his face. And even though it may have been random..and it may ave been crude...it couldn't have been more appropriate at the time....afterall we were barely 18...and all of a sudden it didn't matter who missed what slide or who hit like a pussy or who didn't ride or what penalties I...I mean...anyone...got. Pretty soon we'd all be laughing and goofing and Adam would make his way back and when he and Kyle got going there would be the inevitable challenge of man-hood involving athletic tape and body hair..or mooning the car full of college girls or so-and-so's sister and we'd all do it and suffocate on our laughter.

I'm chuckling now thinking of it...and I'm crying like Pat is but right now I know its for a different reason....I don't want to go back to the Bus to Agra...not yet...so I think of the parties I'd been too and how tempers can flare right about when the beer runs out and how you cold almost set your watch by the fight and out of the crowd would come the BFG and he'd stop it real quick and then find the person who's house it was...or more accuratly the person who's parents were out of town or alseep or whatever...and He'd apologize for the fight...like it was his fault or his fight...when in truth if he hadn't been there it would have been full out mayhem and he was always on your side no matter which side of the fight you or he were "supposed" to be on.

The last time I saw Russ was last summer in Main Street Pizza and I can remeber how I went out for "one beer" which turned into three or four because it was hot and we were sitting on the deck with Michele and Tyler and Andrew and drank Red Hook Sun Rye like we were beer meisters..slapping mosquitos and tryign to wave the smoke fromt he citronella candle over ourselves and everytime Michele swore Russel would look at her real affectionate and sing "She's a lady....whoa whoa whoa...she's a lady..." and we'd all laugh. Russell was home on leave...and even though he'd been thorugh shit and back twice all we could talk about was when he came to visit me at school and the girls and the drunks and the "party" we crashed late night that wasn't a party but a house of sleeping girls and and the look on their face when we came through the door with a videocamera....

That was the last time I saw russell...From what I've been told he went to California and then North Carolina and sometime in there he proposed to Michellle and she said "yes" and then he went to Afghanistan and saved five soldiers lives right before he was killed by "small arms fire" on June 13th, 2006.


....and I'm on the midnight bus to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and I can't sleep so I'm writing this in my head.

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Comments

[Kevin]

Jimmy...good to read your journal. Rest assured that no matter where you are and what is happening , things are the same on Gostosa. We dunked the spinnaker twice the other night on takedowns and blamed you...because it had to have been your fault somehow. Maybe because you were on the bus to Agra. Think about you often, but my cell phone doesn't go to India. Keep smiling. Come visit when you are home.....we may need crew for Marblehead if you're available. Kevin

[Linda]

Your adventure into the World
It is so good to read your jounal, it is so much like a novel. I love it. Miss you here in Virginia, know that you are doing well and having a blast while you are there. Take care and know that you are thought of often...